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John looked along the bar. “Where’s your wife? I thought newlyweds stuck together like glue?”
Logan smiled. “Scoff all you like, but I can highly recommend married life. And for the record, Tess is behind you.”
John turned around and nearly choked on the soda he’d swallowed. Rachel and Annie were walking toward them. Rachel had a smile on her face until she saw him. She glanced over her shoulder, and that’s when he noticed Tess. She was carrying something in her hands that looked remarkably like a birthday cake.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Logan muttered. He looked at the smiling faces around the bar. Someone started singing happy birthday, and he looked as though he wanted to disappear.
Rachel and Annie moved away from Tess. The cake she was holding was covered in brightly lit candles.
Grant grinned at Logan. “Exactly how old are you?”
“Don’t make too many jokes. Your birthday isn’t far away, either. When did Tess have the time to organize this?”
Charlie, the owner of the bar, put a glass of wine beside Logan. “This is for Tess. She’s been planning your party for the last three months. We were sworn to secrecy.”
“Is there anything else she hasn’t told me?”
Grant laughed. “I think you can safely rule out anything that might involve semi-naked women and whipped cream.” He glanced at John. “However, as a single man who’s about to turn thirty-nine, I wouldn’t be worried if my brother decided to give me a surprise birthday party.”
“Would that be with or without semi-naked women and whipped cream?” John asked.
“Either option works for me.”
John didn’t have any doubt that it would. Except Grant had about as much hope of that happening as a drought in the middle of winter.
Someone put a small table beside Logan. Tess carefully slid the cake on top of it and ignored her scowling husband. John looked around the bar, trying to see where Rachel had gone.
“She’s over there.” Grant nodded toward the jukebox. “Go and talk to her.”
“She doesn’t want to see me.”
“She can’t ignore you if you stand in front of her.”
John glanced back at the jukebox. If he didn’t make a move now, he’d never get away from the crowd of people moving toward Tess and Logan.
“Go.” His brother gave him a nudge. “You can cry on my shoulder later.”
John took a deep breath and decided, for once in his life, to follow his brother’s advice. It couldn’t be much worse than pretending that nothing had happened. That he might have messed up something that could have been amazing.
He walked across the room and stood beside her. He didn’t know what to say or how to apologize for acting like an idiot.
She stopped pushing the buttons on the jukebox. “I’m supposed to be selecting all of Logan’s favorite music, but I can’t work out how to use the new machine. Do you know how it works?”
John didn’t have a clue, but it couldn’t be rocket science. He was just grateful that she’d asked him and not someone else. “It’s probably like a food vending machine.” He studied the buttons on the control panel.
“Here are the codes for the songs Tess wants me to select.” Rachel flattened a wrinkled sheet of paper. “I, umm, got a bit frustrated and kind of screwed the paper up a bit.”
John looked down at the paper and decided not to say anything. “Is that a P or a D?”
Rachel leaned forward. Her shoulder brushed against his arm and his heartbeat thudded in his chest. He held his breath, hoping she didn’t notice.
“D14,” she said softly. She stepped back, leaving enough room between them for an elephant to step through.
John had no idea how he got the jukebox to register the songs, but he kept pushing buttons and everything seemed to work. He heard everyone clapping at the end of Logan’s birthday song, then lots of laughter as he blew the candles out.
He stepped back when the last song had been programmed into the jukebox. “It should be ready to go. Do you want to push play?”
Rachel nodded and pushed a red button. The first vinyl record dropped into place and Nat King Cole started singing. “Do you think they’re original vinyl records or imitations?”
“Considering they’ve got songs from the Bee Gees and Taylor Swift, I’d say they’re imitations. But good imitations,” he added, in case his answer spoiled Rachel’s appreciation of the jukebox.
He handed her back the list of songs.
“I didn’t know you’d be here,” she said as if she was apologizing. “I knew about the surprise birthday, but not who was invited.”
“Would it have made a difference?”
Rachel looked away. “Maybe. I guess I’m just really sorry about what happened.”
John thought about all of the things he wanted to say to her. Nothing would have made a difference to the awkward silence between them. “Can we be friends?”
“Friends?”
The surprise in Rachel’s blue eyes caught at his heart. “I care about you. I like spending time with you. But if you’d rather not, then that’s okay, too.”
Rachel held his hand and pulled him toward the back door. A fire exit sign glowed above a picture of the President.
She frowned at the photo before letting go of his hand. He flexed his fingers and wondered how her touch could affect him so much. He was back to the heart pounding, sweaty, Neanderthal that he’d been a few minutes before. Did he mention nervous? Because he was. More nervous than he’d been on the night he’d taken Bella’s present to her.
She looked at the people around them and moved a step closer to him. “Tess told me about Logan’s article. She said the men that sent you death threats were doing a lot of illegal things. Why didn’t you tell me everything?”
“I didn’t know a lot about Oracom until we investigated them. When the FBI and the CIA told me that we needed extra security, I didn’t argue. It wasn’t until we looked into what Oracom doesn’t report on, that we realized what we were dealing with.”
Rachel frowned. He didn’t know what he’d done to upset her.
“Why do you confuse me so much?” She sighed. “One minute I’m annoyed with you, and the next minute I want to kiss the living daylights out of you.”
John started to smile, then wiped it away before she saw it. He’d take Rachel’s type of confusion any day.
“I saw you smile,” she muttered. And then she smiled, too. “We’re as bad as each other.” She leaned against the wall and tilted her head backward. “What would the President of the United States of America do in a situation like this?”
John looked at the photo above Rachel’s head, then down into her eyes. He took a step forward and her smile disappeared. “I don’t know, but I know what I want to do.”
“What if someone sees us?” she whispered. “Is kissing under a photo of the President even allowed?”
“It’s better than the Pope.”
Rachel grinned at him. “Or a picture of my parents.”
“Or of Bella,” John whispered. He pushed the handle on the door beside Rachel. “We could always go outside?”
Rachel froze as the noisiest, most shrill siren John had ever heard filled the bar. He looked down at Rachel. She stuck her fingers in her ears and looked up at him.
Damn.
The bar staff started shooing people out of the building. Charlie, the owner of the bar, appeared beside them wearing a bright yellow hard hat and hi-vis vest.
He used his clipboard to whack John on the arm. “You’re too old to be using the fire exit. Get out of here before we’re surrounded by firefighters and the police.”
John didn’t need to be told twice. Half of the town’s reporters were inside the bar wishing Logan a happy birthday. The other half would be waiting by their phones for a late night story. If photos of them made The Bozeman Chronicle’s most wanted page, Rachel wouldn’t speak to him again.
He held Rachel’s hand and pulled her out of the bar, hoping no one noticed the guilty look plastered across their faces. As soon as they were outside, he looked for Tess and Logan. If they were with the birthday boy, it might give them some cover.
Grant tapped him on the shoulder. Or maybe not. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the fire alarm, would you?”
John was saved from answering by the arrival of the fire trucks. Three fire trucks to be precise. And two police cars, four police officers, and an off-duty doctor who was asking if anyone needed help.
John hung his head in shame.
Rachel kept hold of his hand and hid behind his back.
Grant kept his beady-eyed stare on him. “Well?”
“It didn’t say the door was alarmed.” John tried to whisper, but with close to two hundred people standing on the sidewalk, a fire alarm screeching through the air, and the engines of the trucks turning over, it wasn’t exactly easy to have a quiet conversation.
Someone finally turned the alarm off. The split second of silence was followed by the noise of a lot of people talking at once. They wanted to get back inside. The bright lights of the emergency vehicles pulsing around them didn’t make up for the food, music, and drink waiting inside the bar.
